


pseudoprime

by theseourbodies



Category: Numb3rs (TV)
Genre: Family Dynamics, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-16 11:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21506959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/theseourbodies
Summary: For the first year after Charlie’s brother comes home, Amita only knows Don as a stooped figure sitting on various surfaces over Charlie's shoulder.
Relationships: Charlie Eppes & Amita Ramanujan, Charlie Eppes & Don Eppes
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	pseudoprime

For the first year after Charlie’s brother comes home, Amita only knows Don as a stooped figure sitting on various surfaces over Charlie's shoulder, settled deeper in the Eppes family home than she usually goes. She doesn't know him yet except through the way that Charlie describes him and the way that Charlie's life has been shaped by him; seeing him in person feels like an illusion, another hypothetical shape defined by an algorithm that Charlie has developed. 

But the brother is flesh and bone; he exists outside of Charlie's world and work; his life goes on when he is out of sight, but for some reason, she finds her mind struggles with the concept like it struggles with almost nothing else. It's surprisingly difficult to conceive of him outside of Charlie, as a living breathing person who does more than cause his brother a strange, foreign angst and an equally foreign, nearly frantic excitement. Charlie Eppes is a man with fate riding on his shoulders; if anyone will be able to reach out and touch the fundamental forces of the universe, Charlie is uniquely suited to the task. She's known this since the first time she’d come to his office during his office hours, when she had opened his office door and stepped into warm sunlight, the tap-tap of chalk on chalkboard kicking up a subtle haze of dust like a gauzy curtain all around his figure in profile.

As strange as it had been to realize that he had come from somewhere, a mother and a father and a house in the suburbs, it had been even stranger to realize that there had been someone who had come before, just an ordinary man that had been born to the same conditions as Charlie and yet could still be an ordinary man living an ordinary life untouched by the things that Charlie could see, could practically touch. 

Don Eppes' existence feels like a tragedy to her long before his and Charlie's mother finally succumbs to the cancer. 

Charlie is untouchable, unreachable in all senses of the word, the week and a half leading up to her death; she only realizes that Margaret has passed when she walks into his office one day, refusing to creep but going quietly through the back door anyway. There’s a man she only vaguely recognizes as Don, suddenly ripped out of the context of the Eppes family home to stand in familiar warm golden light. Some old instinct that every incredibly intelligent kid who went through any kind of school system shares flinches to see a person bigger than Charlie holding him tightly trapped by the upper arms, while Charlie shakes his head weakly. Don’s stooped to look into Charlie’s downturned face and he’s talking, talking low and fast, but even if she can only just make out the words, his voice isn’t making them a threat.

Amita doesn’t mean to stay, she doesn’t. She’s backing away slowly, trying to get a grip on the door again to close it behind her when Charlie breaks open just out of sight—a thin, low moan fills all the space around her and she watches Don pull his brother’s wildly tossing head against his shoulder through the open book case that blocks her complete view. He wraps a hand over Charlie’s neck, holding him tight and close.

Amita steps out and closes the door behind her. She’s seen enough.


End file.
